


you're so soft, you make me hard

by girljustdied



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2019-10-03 07:33:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: jace is vulnerable and maia is absolutely not.





	you're so soft, you make me hard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstaudrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/gifts).



> takes place after “the fair folk.”   
> prompt was "you stayed?" "yeah." "you stayed."

He smells like blood. Shallow scratches circle his throat. Eyes rimmed with red and puffy from lack of sleep, he tells her, “I don’t really want to talk about what happened.”

It’s clearly a lie, but is also no such thing. She knows that feeling well; the panicky thoughts, fear numbing the tips of her fingers and cheeks, the instant regret after voicing anything that couldn’t be taken back.

“I didn’t ask.” The words don’t have the bite they might have, before.

“No,” his smile is grim, no teeth, “no, I guess you didn’t.”

She tries to give him something close to normal, “You look like shit.”

“You look beautiful.” His voice is hoarse, and miserable, until it isn’t, “And perhaps I’m a little worse for wear, but really, c’mon. Still a catch.”

He wanted her to see him like this. That’s what she thinks. Leaning against a streetlight across from the Hunter’s Moon like it’s a spotlight and he’s the main attraction.

“Jace,” she snaps, exhausted but still wired from a rowdy night at the bar. And this particular Shadowhunter wasn’t exactly a calming presence. Her fingertips twitch out, then back into loose fists at her sides. She can practically feel the fabric of his sweater against her palms already. “Could you cut the foreplay and just tell me what it is you want?”

“I was looking for a place to crash tonight. I was hoping that place could be yours.”

Lowering her voice in a hopeless prayer that any nearby Downworlders straggling home aren’t listening in, “I really don’t plan on having sex with you again, okay? Just to be clear. When I said that last time meant nothing, I, you know, meant it.”

“Okay,” he shrugs, eyes slipping from hers to gaze sightlessly down the street. Swallows thickly, then says, “So?”

“Okay, then,” she hedges, “well, okay.”

Her apartment is a fifth floor walk-up, and his footfalls behind hers on the stairs are as unnaturally quiet as he now is. He hovers in the doorway while she kicks off her shoes and sheds her coat.

“Close the door. Take off your shoes.”

He does.

It feels too intimate to let him in on her nightly rituals. Leaning back against the half-wall that separates the kitchen from the rest of the living area, she watches him watch her. “You’re kind of freaking me out.” When he doesn’t smirk in response, looks down at his hands instead, her inhale catches in her chest at the novelty. “Say what you’re gonna say,” she implores. “Do whatever it is you’re gonna do.”

He takes one step forward, then another. Reaches out to cup her cheeks with both hands. Takes a breath. Kisses her.

“Yeah, figures,” she mutters against his mouth before kissing him back, lips parting and slanting against his. It’s lazy, unhurried. He tastes like honey. And copper.

He skids a thumb across the line of her cheekbone, “That what you want?”

Apparently. “Listen, if we’re gonna do this, you can’t sleep here. You’ll have to find somewhere else. Got it?”

He touches his forehead to hers, palms sliding from her face to her shoulders, and steps back, disconnecting. Says, “Got it.”

Wait. “Wait, what?”

He laughs, but it’s a low, rough sound. “What?”

She curls her index and middle fingers over the edge of his jeans and pulls him back until his hips are flush with hers. “What’s wrong with you?”

Crushes her lips to his again, hands digging under his shirt to touch the musculature of his stomach, his chest—

“Can this,” he interrupts to gesture at the narrow space between them, panting lightly, face tight like he’s trying to keep himself in check, “mean something.” He purses his mouth into a thin line as if he wants to take it back, but then reasserts, “Can it be about something? Not love. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” is her unyielding reply.

“Yeah, but just something. Anything.”

It takes a while for her to find her voice, “Like?” Hates the sound of it, unsure and tinny.

“It could be about,” he hooks a finger carefully around the hoop of her left earring, tracing along the inner curve of the circle, “your sense of style.”

She can feel the pull of the silver against her earlobe, can feel it in her whole body. Wants to laugh. To force an amused, mocking chuckle from her breast and welcome the sight of his frown.

“It could be about how reckless—”

There it is. She huffs scornfully, “Run out of sweet talk that quick, Shadowhunter?”

He licks his lips. “Are you going to let me finish?”

“Sure.” She props her hands on the low wall behind her and leans back. “C’mon, let’s hear it.”

“How reckless you can be when it comes to the people you care about. Brave.”

 _He’d know_ , she wants to say. Been on the receiving end of her need for vengeance more than once. She can still remember washing his blood from her knuckles. Only now she also knows what his sweat tastes like, and the sounds he makes when she drags her mouth up his inner thigh—

“What?” his head cocked to the side, studying her face. “No snappy retort?”

“It’s an interesting thing to like about me,” she answers carefully. “Since you’re usually the one I’m trying to protect my people from.”

“It could be about anger,” he offers with a hint of self-loathing. “If that’s what works for you. Animosity? Annoyance?”

“You know what’s really annoying?” And then, at his responding grin, “That, that right there.” She traces the line his bottom lip with the pad of her thumb.

“You like my smile?” he teases, lightening up a touch. “Really?”

“No, you jackass.” She pulls her hand back to punch him in the shoulder, no fire behind it so he catches her wrist easily. “It’s more about how much you seem to like it when I’m little bit cruel to you.”

“Aw,” he holds onto her wrist, pulls at her until her chest plasters against his, closing up the space. “I know that’s just how you express affection.”

She smirks, “It so isn’t.” And then, at the tip of his nose tracing a line down the bridge of her own, “When I like someone, I’m really very nice.” Knows she shouldn’t continue, but does anyway, “Ask Simon.”

She can feel his body tense against hers, but it’s only a split-second before he’s bending to kiss her neck, mouth open and hot and lightly sucking at her pulse point.

“Oh yeah?” She can feel his teeth scrape against her oversensitive skin as he speaks. “Show me.”

There are things that she could say. _No. Fuck no. Leave._

“Why didn’t you hit up Magnus for a place to stay? Or, I don’t know, a pretty mundane? Someone who knows nothing about you or the things you’ve done?” The things that have been done to him. “Or, hey, ever heard of a little thing called Airbnb?”

Already knows the answer to her questions the same way she knows why she’d let him follow her home in the first place.

He pauses the assault on her senses, pulls back to look at her. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Specifically?”

“Yeah, specifically.”

“Well,” she bites her lip, gathers up the fabric of his sweater stretching over his clavicles and uses that hold to shove him down to his knees. “I guess I like that about you, too.”

He touches her inner ankle, runs his hand up until she has to part her legs further for its journey to be able to continue up her skirt.

“So,” his voice is almost a growl, makes her cheeks feel hot, “we understand each other?”

“Mmm,” she murmurs, and slings a leg over his shoulder. Flexes her calf against his back until he moves forward to run a line of firm kisses up that thigh.

When he finally presses his mouth to her cunt through her cotton underwear, the thin fabric is already damp with her own juices. He groans against her, a hand tugging roughly at a side seam until she places a hand over his, nails digging in.

“Don’t rip it,” she gasps. “Don’t.”

She goes through her clothes too quickly already.

With a strained exhale, he cants back away from her until he’s on his back on the floor, knees still bent. Runs a shaking hand over his face. She lets her body dip down until she’s in a straddle over his lap. Can feel the hard line of his dick, his hips pressing up against her enough that her body lifts and she can readjust her legs into a more comfortable position for what’s ahead.

Gripping the neckline of his sweater with both hands, she examines the shifting lines of his face, and waits.

He smiles, one corner rising further than the other, gaze knowing.

Times like this, and most times, she loves the strength that’s right at her fingertips, ready. Enjoys the sound of Jace’s shirt ripping open, the hard planes of his chest exposed, flushed and beaded with sweat.

After that, it’s quick. She doesn’t lose a single article of clothing, everything carefully twisted or pushed aside or yanked up. Comes with a startled shout when he presses his middle finger to her clit and lets her grind against it as she rides him, his other hand with fingers splayed wide across her ribs, just under her breasts. She collapses against his chest and lets him do the rest of the work, hips rutting up until he grunts and stills, arched up into her.

The room is filled with only the sounds on their breathing for a time. As they still the outside word filters back in. Car horns, music and scattered shouts, the asshole that lives above her stomping around as if it wasn’t almost three in the morning.

“How do you sleep?” his voice muffled by her hair.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just used to it.” Struggles to her feet and heads into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

By the time she’s done her best to avoid an UTI, changed until a new pair of underwear and t-shirt, and wrapped her hair, she comes out to find him already passed out on her loveseat. Body twisted awkwardly to fit into the space, the muscles of his jaw still not quite relaxed. He doesn’t snore.

Good.

She is not so lucky. Faces away from him, closes her eyes and tries to pretend that she’s alone. Can’t sleep but tries to keep her body still.

It could be hours, it could be minutes.

“Maia,” he whispers. His voice doesn’t startle her. “You awake?”

“I am now,” she lies, turning over to her other side to look at him.

His eyes flick from the ceiling to her, then away again. On his back with an arm slung behind his head and one leg sloping over the arm of the couch, he looks far more comfortable than before. “Thank you. I don’t think I said that.”

“You didn’t,” she agrees.

“Well, now I did.”

There is still a melancholy to his voice that finally makes her say what she should have the second he showed up outside the Hunter’s Moon looking for her.

Tries to be soft about it, less blunt, but fails: “I know about what happened with Clary. The kiss.”

“Why’d you let me,” he takes a beat, maybe trying to find the right words as well, “kiss _you_ , then?”

“Because we’re not fucking dating, Jace.”

He laughs, “Oh, right.”


End file.
